​Congregations

Many faces, many places, many forms

Uniting Church congregations throughout the country are caring communities to which all people can belong. There are more than 2,200 of these congregations with 243,000 members and adherents.

A congregation may have hundreds of members or be a tiny community of a dozen people; found deep in the heart of our cities or in the most isolated and outback towns.

They have many faces. There are older people and young, families and single people, heterosexual people and homosexual people, people of one culture or many. At least 40 different languages are used in worship in the Uniting Church each week.

There are congregations that have existed for many years, and new and very different ones — cafe style churches, groups that find it better to worship on Wednesdays than on Sundays, or who minister across a region rather than a local area.

While our congregations can be vastly different, each aims to embrace all people — to unite them with each other and with God. This is expressed in part by our having an open table for Holy Communion, to which all baptised people are invited, welcoming children for baptism and being willing to marry those who are divorced.

Our congregations are communities in which people seek to follow Jesus, learn about God, share their faith, care for each other, serve the local community, and seek to live faithfully and with real joy. This is the kind of engaging church to which we belong.